d be little satisfaction to receive interest and repayment from
them, and the payment due from them, involving difficult problems of
taxation for them, would not help the good relations with them which,
we hope, may be a lasting effect of the war. And such an act of
renunciation on our part would do something towards a restoration
of the spirit with which we entered on war, a spirit which has been
seriously demoralised during its course, largely owing to the results
of our faulty finance, which encouraged profiteering in all classes.

In any case, there is our position. We have a big debt to meet at
home and abroad, and we are weakened on capital account by foreign
indebtedness, wear and tear of plant and dimunition of stocks and
materials. Wear and tear and depletion we can soon make good if we set
to work and work hard, if our bureaucracy takes away the fetters of
its restrictions and controls (instead of making further additions
to the "Black List" even after the armistice!), and if our ruling
wiseacres will refrain from trying to stimulate industry by taxing raw
and half-raw materials. For the debt charge many pleasant and
simple fancy strokes are suggested. The Levy on Capital is popular,
especially with those who do not own any, but its advocacy is by no
means confined to them. Mr Pethick Lawrence has published a persuasive
little book about it, but I cannot see that he meets the objections
to it. These are, the difficulty of valuation, the fact that in many
cases it would have to be paid by instalments, and so would be merely
another form of income tax, its sparing of the waster and penalising
of the saver, and, consequently, the grave danger that it would check
accumulation and so dry up the springs of capital. Mr Stilwell
has produced a "Great Plan to Pay for the War," by which all the
belligerents and neutrals who have been involved in expense by the war
would receive World Bonds from an International Congress for what
they have spent owing to the war, and would then pay one another any
international debts by exchanging these World Bonds, and deal with the
home debt by paying it off in new currency raised on the World Bonds.
But, surely, to pay off war debt with a huge addition to currency,
making war's inflation many times worse, would be a disastrous
beginning to that new era which is alleged to be dawning.

By hard work, sparing consumption of luxuries, and a big industrial
output, we can soon make the deb